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Also known as | EMC Symmetrix DMX EMC Symmetrix VMAX |
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Developer | EMC Corporation |
Type | Storage server |
Release date | 1992 |
Discontinued | 2014 |
Successor | Dell EMC VMAX |
The Symmetrix system was an EMC's enterprise storage array. It combined dozens of hard drives into a single virtual device that was then directly attached to a computer or I/O channel, or shared on a storage area network or a local area network. It was the flagship product of EMC in the 1990s and 2000s.
Symmetrix arrays, EMC's flagship product at that time, began shipping in 1990 as a storage array connected to an IBM mainframe via the block multiplexer channel. Newer generations of Symmetrix brought additional host connection protocols which include ESCON, SCSI, Fibre Channel-based storage area networks (SANs), FICON and iSCSI. The Symmetrix product was initially popular within the airline industry and with companies that were willing to deviate from the safety of IBM's 3390 disk subsystem and take a risk with the unproven Symmetrix array.
This product is the main reason for the rapid growth of EMC in the 1990s, both in size and value, from a company valued hundreds of millions of dollars to a multi-billion company. [1] Moshe Yanai managed the Symmetrix development from the product's inception in 1987 until shortly before leaving EMC in 2001, [2] and his Symmetrix development team grew from several people to thousands.
EMC Symmetrix VMAX systems are storage platforms intended for open systems and mainframe computing. Symmetrix VMAX systems run the Enginuity operating environment.
Generation | Models | Production years | Disks (Max) | Memory (Max) |
---|---|---|---|---|
EMC Symmetrix models | ||||
Symm2 | 4000, 4400, 4800 | 1992 | 24 | |
Symm3 | 3100, 3200, 3500 | 1994 | 32 / 96 / 128 | 4 GB |
Symm 4.0 | 3330/5330, 3430/5430, 3700/5700 | 1996 | 32 / 96 / 128 | 8 GB / 16 GB |
Symm 4.8 | 3630/5630, 3830/5830, 3930/5930 | 1998 | 32 / 96 / 256 / 384 | 8 GB / 16 GB |
Symm 5.0 | 8430, 8730 | 2000 | 96 / 384 | 32 GB |
Symm 5.5 | 8230, 8530, 8830 | 2001 | 48 / 96 / 384 | 32 GB |
EMC Symmetrix DMX models | ||||
DMX, DMX2 | DMX-800, DMX-1000, DMX-2000, DMX-3000 | 2003 | 144 / 288 / 576 | |
DMX3, DMX4 | 1500, 2500, 3500, 4500 | 2005 | 240 / 960 / 1440 / 2400 | 64 / 144 / 216 / 256 GB |
EMC Symmetrix VMAX models | ||||
VMAX | VMAX, VMAXe, VMAX-SE, VMAX 10K, VMAX 20K, VMAX 40K | 2009+ | 1080 / 2400 / 3200 | 512 / 1024 / 2048 GB |
Dell EMC VMAX models | ||||
VMAX3 | VMAX 100K, 200K, 400K | 2014+ | 1440 / 2880 / 5760 | 2TB / 8TB / 16 TB |
VMAX All Flash | VMAX 250F, 450F, 850F, 950F | 2016+ | 1PB / 2PB / 4PB / 4PB | 4TB / 8TB / 16TB / 16TB |
Dell PowerMax NVMe models | ||||
PowerMax | PowerMax 2000, 8000 | 2018 | 1PB / 4PB | 4TB / 16TB |
PowerMax | PowerMax 2500, 8500 | 2022 | 8PB / 18PB | ? |
The Direct Matrix Architecture (DMX) product line with models DMX800, DMX1000 and DMX2000 were announced in February 2003. [3]
The system scales from a single Symmetrix VMAX Engine system with one storage bay to a large eight-engine system with a maximum of ten storage bays.
The Symmetrix VMAX system bay can hold one to eight engines. These engines house the hardware for all the data processing capabilities. Each engine contains two director boards, memory chips, and front-end (FE) and back-end (BE) ports for connectivity to hosts and storage bays, respectively.
Each director board contains two Intel quad-core processors for data processing, 16, 32 or 64 GB of physical memory, one System Interface Board (SIB) that connects the director to the Matrix Interface Board Enclosure (MIBE), front-end and back-end ports.
The VMAX has one to ten storage bays for hard drives. Each storage bay contains 16 Disk Array Enclosures (DAE). Each DAE contains 15-25 hard drives. VMAX supports SATA, Fiber Channel, SAS and Solid State drives. [4]
The Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) is a family of software products that facilitates the data replication from one Symmetrix storage array to another through a storage area network or Internet Protocol (IP) network.
SRDF logically pairs a device or a group of devices from each array and replicates data from one to the other synchronously or asynchronously. An established pair of devices can be split, so that separate hosts can access the same data independently (maybe for backup), and then be resynchronised.
In synchronous mode (SRDF/S), the primary array waits until the secondary array has acknowledged each write before the next write is accepted, ensuring that the replicated copy of the data is always as current as the primary. However, the latency due to propagation increases significantly with distance.
Asynchronous SRDF (SRDF/A) transfers changes made to the secondary array in units called delta sets, which are transferred at defined intervals. Although the remote copy of the data will never be as current as the primary copy, this method can replicate data over considerable distances and with reduced bandwidth requirements and minimal impact on host performance.
Other forms of SRDF integrate with clustered environments and to manage multiple SRDF pairs where replication of multiple devices must be consistent (such as with the data files and log files of a database application).
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced in the 1980s and has seen widespread use on servers and high-end workstations, with new SCSI standards being published as recently as SAS-4 in 2017.
A direct-access storage device (DASD) is a secondary storage device in which "each physical record has a discrete location and a unique address". The term was coined by IBM to describe devices that allowed random access to data, the main examples being drum memory and hard disk drives. Later, optical disc drives and flash memory units are also classified as DASD.
Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP network. iSCSI facilitates data transfers over intranets and to manage storage over long distances. It can be used to transmit data over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), or the Internet and can enable location-independent data storage and retrieval.
Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) was a serial transport protocol used to attach disk drives to server computers. It was developed by IBM employee Ian Judd in 1990 to provide data redundancy for critical applications. SSA was deployed in server RAID environments, where it was capable of providing for up to 80 MB/s of data throughput, with sustained data rates as high as 60 MB/s in non-RAID mode and 35 MB/s in RAID mode.
Clariion is a discontinued SAN disk array manufactured and sold by EMC Corporation, it occupied the entry-level and mid-range of EMC's SAN disk array products. In 2011, EMC introduced the EMC VNX Series, designed to replace both the Clariion and Celerra products.
A World Wide Name (WWN) or World Wide Identifier (WWID) is a unique identifier used in storage technologies including Fibre Channel, Parallel ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS).
ESCON is a data connection created by IBM, and is commonly used to connect their mainframe computers to peripheral devices such as disk storage, tape drives and IBM 3270 display controllers. ESCON is an optical fiber, half-duplex, serial interface. It originally operated at a rate of 10 MB/s, which was later increased to 17 MB/s. The current maximum distance is 43 kilometers.
Peer to Peer Remote Copy or PPRC is a protocol to replicate a storage volume to another control unit at a remote site. Synchronous PPRC causes each write to the primary storage volume to be performed to the secondary volume as well, and the I/O is only considered complete when the update to both the primary and secondary volumes has completed. Asynchronous PPRC will flag tracks on the primary to be duplicated to the secondary when time permits.
A virtual tape library (VTL) is a data storage virtualization technology used typically for backup and recovery purposes. A VTL presents a storage component as tape libraries or tape drives for use with existing backup software.
EMC NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product from Dell EMC that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.
The IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is a block storage virtualization appliance that belongs to the IBM System Storage product family. SVC implements an indirection, or "virtualization", layer in a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN).
A SCSI connector is used to connect computer parts that communicate with each other via the SCSI standard. Generally, two connectors, designated male and female, plug together to form a connection which allows two components, such as a computer and a disk drive, to communicate with each other. SCSI connectors can be electrical connectors or optical connectors. There have been a large variety of SCSI connectors in use at one time or another in the computer industry. Twenty-five years of evolution and three major revisions of the standards resulted in requirements for Parallel SCSI connectors that could handle an 8, 16 or 32 bit wide bus running at 5, 10 or 20 megatransfer/s, with conventional or differential signaling. Serial SCSI added another three transport types, each with one or more connector types. Manufacturers have frequently chosen connectors based on factors of size, cost, or convenience at the expense of compatibility.
The IBM Storage product portfolio includes disk, flash, tape, NAS storage products, storage software and services. IBM's approach is to focus on data management.
A clustered file system (CFS) is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously mounted on multiple servers. There are several approaches to clustering, most of which do not employ a clustered file system. Clustered file systems can provide features like location-independent addressing and redundancy which improve reliability or reduce the complexity of the other parts of the cluster. Parallel file systems are a type of clustered file system that spread data across multiple storage nodes, usually for redundancy or performance.
EMC VPLEX is a virtual computer data storage product introduced by EMC Corporation in May 2010. VPLEX implements a distributed "virtualization" layer within and across geographically disparate Fibre Channel storage area networks and data centers.
Moshe Yanai is an Israeli electrical engineer. He is an inventor, businessman, entrepreneur, aviator, investor, and philanthropist. He led the development of the EMC Symmetrix, the flagship product of EMC Corporation in the 1990s, which prevented, to some extent, financial chaos in New York Stock Exchange and certain banks after the September 11 attacks, as further detailed below.
RecoverPoint is a continuous data protection product offered by Dell EMC which supports asynchronous and synchronous data replication of block-based storage. RecoverPoint was originally created by a company called Kashya, which was bought by EMC in 2006.
Disk-based backup refers to technology that allows one to back up large amounts of data to a disk storage unit. It is often supplemented by tape drives for data archival or replication to another facility for disaster recovery. Backup-to-disk is a popular in enterprise use for both technical and business reasons. Storage devices have gotten faster access time and higher storage capacity. There are different forms of disks used for back up, standard mechanical disks and solid state disks.
Hard disk drives are accessed over one of a number of bus types, including parallel ATA, Serial ATA (SATA), SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), and Fibre Channel. Bridge circuitry is sometimes used to connect hard disk drives to buses with which they cannot communicate natively, such as IEEE 1394, USB, SCSI, NVMe and Thunderbolt.
Dell EMC VMAX is Dell EMC’s flagship enterprise storage array product line. It evolved out of the EMC Symmetrix array, EMC’s primary storage product of 1990s and early 2000s.